Analysis: Internships can offer experience and guidance
What they can offer, if there’s no likelihood of a permanent post at the end of the internship, is experience, a little guidance and the opportunity for the graduate to network.
If every entrepreneur, start-up, small and medium enterprise and corporate body were to explore the opportunity to employ a graduate intern, then overnight the social and economic issue of graduate unemployment would be pretty much resolved. The importance of paid, well-structured and accessible internships cannot be understated if we are going to achieve social mobility, economic recovery and avoid a lost generation of graduates.
• Joy Lewis is programme director for Adopt an Intern.